Diners are being forced to tip more — but service has never been worse

The NYPD should add another category to its weekly crime  tallies — Grand Larceny Restaurants. 

As The Post reported, some Big Apple eateries now sock customers with mandatory tips. Just as annoyingly, many places — including the new Point Seven restaurant in the Met Life building — list “suggested tips” from 20% to 25%.

Although not as costly as Grand Larceny Auto, it’s infuriating when we’re forced or urged to gift “hard-working” service workers when the service sometimes stinks.

Make that stinks, blows and sucks. In my long career of writing about the New York City dining scene, I’ve never seen so many waiters, “food runners” and other floor functionaries who are either untrained, stoned or both as I have in the past year.

Nor “managers” who, rather than actually manage anything, pace back-and-forth like scared wildebeests and occasionally stop by to ask if everything’s “delicious.”

A request for ketchup that should automatically come with French fries elicits a snarky look. “Table ten, dude wants ketchup! Watch out for this guy!”

Lots of owners now regard floor employees as unskilled labor who only need view a 20-minute orientation film. They blame the lack of training on pandemic losses, but the pandemic’s over and they’re opening more new places than ever.

It’s true that some experienced staff left the business or the city, but many have  come back — as I learned from conversations on recent visits to Cafe Chelsea, Delmonico’s and BLT Prime where the service is just fine.

Another hollow argument is that some foreign tourists don’t know they’re supposed to tip or pretend not to know. But that was always true, and yet restaurants and employees somehow survived and thrived.

Making customers pony up a few more bucks might really be for the illicit benefit of owners and managers. Are they improperly dipping into tips which are meant only for non-managerial staff? Certain places such as Gramercy Tavern and former Joe Bastianich-Mario Batali joints had to cough up big settlements for doing precisely that.

The Post cited Five Acres in the Rockefeller Center concourse which automatically charges a 20 percent gratuity “for our hardworking staff” according to messaging on menus and bills. 

But the staff did not work hard on my lunch visits when they were in a rush to go home. It was easier to flag down a speeding cab than to get anyone’s attention to order. Although the food was swell, I haven’t been back.

I’ve been a generous tipper all my life. But my respect is strained when the eating-out scene turns meals into ordeals.

Restaurants where they process your credit card at the table make you choose your tip in front of the waiter as he or she watches your every move. Leave less than 20% and their eyes say, “Cheapskate!”

I’m still trying to make sense of my recent lunch at Ecuadorean spot Barzola in Astoria. A review of my bill showed that on top of a roughly $30 tab, I paid both a 3% service charge of $.96, plus a $6.39 tip that I didn’t remember making. It also had lines for a “suggested additional tip” from 2% to 7%, a suggestion I declined.

One night last spring at Aperitivo on East 60th Street, I agreed with my friends who are generous, longtime eatery owners to tip a measly 10%. It was actually too much after an evening-long struggle to receive any service at all.

Most infuriating is the attitude of James Mallios, the owner of Amali on 60th Street and Calissa in Water Mill, which are now adding 18% to all checks.

“When [customers] act upset, it’s really about loss of the power dynamic,” Mallios told The Post. “They want to be able to determine a person’s wage, and this is the only industry where you can do that.”

But eaters don’t determine a person’s wage, the restaurant does! Mallios could pay his servers more and simply charge more for his food. Instead he has to include an “automatic” tip.

I’d rather we have the European system of no-tipping where bills include built-in service charges. Some  New York places tried it a few years ago, with even the great Danny Meyer on board.

It didn’t work, unfortunately — our culture and restaurant economics are different than in Europe, where  there’s greater respect for service-job careers than at home and tip-wrangling isn’t on the table.

Sneaking it back in isn’t the way to make employees a few cents better off — or to make customers keep coming back.